Futuristic audience interaction and a unique mixture of opera, musical and game.

There are just not enough words in the English language to describe how incredibly awesome this evening in the Netherlands was. And it started great already, thanks to the event’s crew (special thanks to Marketing Manager Nigel Tanihatu).

Our first impression of the Rock Opera was the end of the dress rehearsal: we got the first glimpse of Ingeborg Steenhorst’s beautifully intricate job – it sure can’t be easy to take characters from the fantasy worlds of an adventure videogame and make them come to life with such a nice variety of fabrics and textures; and on top of that make the outfits fit different performers. The costumes and requisites are a work of art in their own right.

Of course it’s not until the performance begins that we really see these characters alive and telling their story. The narrator, performed by XANDRIA’s Dianne van Giersbergen and her very operatic voice, introduces us to a colorful world accompanied by magical orchestra melodies. Like in the conventional opera, very helpful subtitles appear through a smartphone app, which also allows the spectators to influence the story by voting from time to time and so deciding which way the characters will go – making us forget we’re sitting in an elegant theater and immersing us more into the fantasy, quite a unique experience.

And the story goes on to tell us the struggles of The Conductor (Bas Dolmans) to get back his blue haired Muse (Marcela Bovio), who’s been taken by The Dissonance (George Oosthoek). Later we see many other plots like this one, fantasy characters from different realms, like The Shaman (Mariangela Demurtas, second picture from the left) and The Hero (Henning Basse, far right), interacting with personified figures of music theory. The acting of the different scenes and dialogues varied from merely song performance to real theatrical drama, although the singing quality never diminished: the most dramatic scene being the dispute between Sun-Brother (Arjan Janissen) and Moon-Sister (Michelle Splietelhof), probably due to Splietelhof’s experience as a musical performer.

In the final scene, STREAM OF PASSION’s front woman takes the stage again – this time portraying The Destroyer, who fights fiercely against The Creator, George Oosthoek coming back as well to play this strong, grunting part. The latter wins the battle, getting the power to create more of these fantastic worlds: a very operatic ending leaving us very excited to see this story play out in full length in the videogame that was just released on Monday, January 19th.

Pictures by Anno von Sachsen and screenshots of the different features of the Karmaflow Live App.